Place Your Bets on the Super Committee

The likelihood of a Super Committee deficit-reduction deal by Nov. 23 depends on a slew of moving parts. But that hasn't prevented banks, politicians and reporters from venturing a guess at the odds of an 11th hour agreement.

The likelihood of a Super Committee deficit-reduction deal by Nov. 23 depends on a slew of moving parts. But that hasn't prevented banks, politicians and reporters from venturing a guess at the odds of an 11th hour agreement. It's not a science but with America's credit rating potentially at stake, the impasse has had political risk consultants and market analysts scheming up probability outcomes. Below are the predictions we've seen so far with "failure" defined as a stalemate between Democrats and Republicans resulting in sequestration, "success" as an agreement on $1.2 trillion in savings, "going big" as a deal larger than $1.2 trillion and "partial deal" as something less than $1.2 trillion:

What you see is a sort of sliding scale of pessimism, with institutionalized groups such as analysts from Eurasia Group and JPMorgan Chase more optimistic, politicians and staffers estimating 50-50 odds, and journalists and think-tankers projecting the most pessimism. So unless you're pining for a Super Committee impasse, better hope the journalists are wrong. We'll keep tracking predictions as they emerge.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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